Epilogue Part 1: Prisons

Many Years Later
Nurmengard

"To what do I owe the pleasure of a visitor?" rasped the harsh voice of the ancient man in the cell. "And the one who provided me that night of entertainment, so many years ago, no less. I am honored, Harry Potter."

Harry's eyebrows briefly rose. "This is the first time we've met," he said. "How do you know my old name?"

The prison's only prisoner hacked out a laugh, then revealed something he'd been concealing in the cell. It was a book-

No, not a book.

A magazine.

A copy of Transfiguration Today, to be specific.

It was an issue Harry recognized.

He was fairly familiar with it, given that a first-edition print was on display in the living room of his childhood home.

"This was given to me by a guard who thought it would anger me," Grindelwald said with a grin. "It had quite the opposite effect." The old man tossed the contraband towards Harry. "Keep it if you wish. I've read it so many times that it's burned into my memory."

Harry shrugged, stooped to pick it up, and put it into his robes. "Thanks."

"Why are you here, Mr. Potter?" asked the decrepit Dark Lord.

"It's Mr. Rosier now, actually," said Harry. "And I'm here to give a gift."

"A gift?" the former führer asked, suddenly on guard. (Likely as a result of numerous 'gifts' from the prison guards.) "What kind of gift?"

"Reading material," Harry clarified, "which I've convinced the guards not to take from you."

"Oh?" asked Grindelwald, the barest tinge of excitement in his dry, dying voice. "How did you manage that?"

"By describing the contents of the material," said Harry, "and explaining to them the effect I thought it might have on you."

Grindelwald's eyes narrowed. "More fictional tripe, I presume?"

"Quite the opposite."

Harry removed the texts he'd brought from his enchanted trousers, then tossed them into the cell one at a time, mindful not to levitate them lest he activate the prison's wards. He had to watch them land in heaps on the ground, but the books would be fine. They had been enchanted by Harry to resist wear and tear. But only that. There were no other enchantments placed upon them, not least because anything more than convenience charms would have set off the prison wards.

(The man in the cell, back when he'd been designing this prison, had been smart enough not to ward against certain quality-of-life charms that the prison guards would need to use on a day-to-day basis.)

Grindelwald greedily grabbed the books as they entered his cell, then read a few titles aloud. "The Feynman Lectures on Physics, volumes one through three. Influence: Science and Practice, by Robert Cialdini. How the Mind Works, by Steven Pinker. The Mind Doesn't Work That Way, by Jerry Fodor." Grindelwald's eyes returned to Harry's. "What is this?"

Harry's own eyes were locked onto Grindelwald's. "Those are some of the very best textbooks I encountered while I was hiding from the most recently defeated Dark Lord."

There was a pause as the not-so-recently defeated Dark Lord absorbed this.

"You freely offer knowledge?" Grindelwald asked skeptically. "To me? Am I to take this kindness at face-value?"

"I freely offer muggle knowledge," Harry amended. "As for whether you would consider that a kindness, I'll leave that up to you."

"Muggle knowledge?" laughed Grindelwald. "You say that as if there could be such a thing."

"I do," said Harry. "I learned a great deal from the muggles, and from those books in particular. Then I applied much of what I learned to accomplish this." Harry tossed an article of his own to Grindelwald. It was a copy of the final article ever written about his academic achievements at Durmstrang. "You can keep that as well. I'm going to examine the enchantments on this prison for the next hour, though of course I won't be messing with them. I'll return when I'm done. In the meantime, please read the article."

True to his word, the man returned after what felt like an hour.

It had taken Gellert thirty minutes to realize Mr. Rosier's intentions. He had laughed aloud when he did. He had spent the next thirty minutes getting over his humour.

"Did you come here to brag?" Gellert asked in an amused rasp. Then, with even more amusement, "Or are you actually attempting to change my mind about the Greater Good?"

"Not quite either. I came to inform you that a year from now, you're going to be allowed to choose between staying inside that cell or leaving it."

Gellert barked at the bald-faced lie. "Oh am I?"

"Yes," said the Magus. "Oh, and to answer your other question, the bragging is a side benefit."

"Very well," Gellert chuckled. "I'll play along. If you speak true, why would I ever choose not to leave?"

"Because in order to be allowed to leave, you'll have to swear numerous Unbreakable Vows. They'll prevent you from professing, promoting, promising, preaching, or pursuing what you currently call the Greater Good, among other things."

Gellert gave another bark of laughter. "Replacing one cage with another. From bars of steel and walls of stone to a devil's deal and no will of my own." Suddenly, Gellert realised where this was going. "With a hefty sentence of community service added on top, no doubt, to force me to atone."

The fact that he hadn't been treated with abuse in the past six months, and the fact that the conditions in his cell had been improved by the guards, now made a great deal of sense.

Up until this point, he had been fearing the moment the luxuries would be taken away. Like the old torture of Tantalus from Greek Mythology, knee-deep in a pool of water yet unable to drink it, surrounded by low-hanging fruit yet unable to eat them. Tantalus was once given a small taste of water by a soul who thought she was being kind, but his pain after that moment became all the crueler once he knew what he could be having.

He thought the guards were doing the same, but it seemed those responsible for his cell's better conditions were not being pointlessly vindictive. They had, in fact, been self-serving.

"I see it now," Gellert said aloud. "Want to put my talents to use before I die?"

"Pretty much," Mr. Rosier nodded. "Though it wasn't my idea. I'm only here to give your freedom a fighting chance."

"What is that supposed to mean?"

"It means," said the Man-Who-Lives, "that if nothing changes in the next year, you'll probably reject the Vows once you hear the precise wording of their muggle-friendly contents. Even the politicians who proposed the idea and the politicians who voted on it don't really expect you to get released in the end, based on your belief systems. And when I first heard the agreed Vow wordings, I thought the same thing."

Gellert said nothing.

"But then I realised something. The two of us are a lot alike. Intelligence, power, the school we went to... plus, I also used to view muggles as inferior – never to the extent that you do, mind you, but I did feel that way. And considering the fact my own mind was changed when I read the muggle-written books currently sitting in your cell... well, perhaps I'm just trying to see a part of myself in you, but I think there's a possibility your mind could be changed as well."

"Unlike you," Gellert said flippantly, "over a century of thought has led me to my current state of mind. Do you truly believe you can change it? In less than a year, no less?"

"No," Mr. Rosier sighed sadly. "I do not. I've read too much psychology literature to expect anything greater than a one in one-hundred chance that you'll change your mind in time for the Vows. Still, maybe it's just wishful thinking on my part but a one in one-hundred chance is better than zero in one-hundred chance."

"Optimism," Gellert said glumly, "is a terrible curse. It leads to disappointment and failure."

"True," Mr. Rosier nodded. "But it also leads to action and hope. And while pessimism can mitigate the downsides of getting hopes up, pessimism has its own problems, like inaction and defeatism. That's why I aim to find a middle ground. A neutral setting. And I did find it." The man drew himself up, and he suddenly seemed taller. "At my core, I'm a scholar. I appreciate true knowledge, no matter the source – good or evil, magic or muggle, hard or soft, left or right, high or low, so long as it's accurate I don't care who provides it. And I tend to find a new appreciation for the provider along the way. If that same scholarship is anywhere near the centre of your core – and I suspect that it is – then I think there's a chance for you." The man pointed a finger at the new items in Gellert's cell. "Those books might be the only way you ever decide on your own that you don't need to replace the history of muggles subjugating wizards with a future of wizards subjugating muggles."

Gellert's mind, sharp as always, took little time to comprehend that final line, and no time at all to comprehend the rest of what Magus Rosier had said, though it took some time to come up with a response.

"You," he said at last, "a Master of the Dark Arts, subscribe to pacifism?"

"To the non-aggression principle, actually," the man said with a shrug. "Defense and justice are fine, and so is power, but I don't aggress against others unless they aggress against me first. I also like to treat others the way they treat me. Another name for it is being a symmatrist, reflecting behaviours back to others like a symmetrical mirror."

"And you expect muggles to adhere to the same philosophy?" Gellert asked incredulously.

"Some of them already do," nodded the man. "At least when it comes to wizards and witches."

In response to what must have been a completely disbelieving expression on Gellert's face, Mr. Rosier elaborated his outlandish claim.

"Once the Statute of Secrecy inevitably broke down, the democratic muggle governments didn't suddenly decide to become tyrannical overnight. And even the governments of third world countries didn't start attacking wizardkind any more than they continued attacked each other. The more advanced countries weren't stupid or evil enough to attack at all. It would've meant harming their fellow countrymen – countrymen who could retaliate in unknown ways. Most governments turned their efforts towards cooperation, and that meant a lot of anti-discrimination laws got passed very quickly with heavy penalties carried out by muggle governments against muggle transgressors. Once Muggle America started the trend, Muggle Europe quickly followed. Magical Britain, Magical Germany, Magical Norway, and a few other magical countries passed similar laws protecting muggles from their own citizens to show their gratitude, though it's still taking Magical America a bit of time to finally do the same, even though muggle America started the whole thing. Bad history with witch-burning and all that. But at least they're close. Some parts of the world have much more catching up to do..." he trailed off, likely noting Gellert's expression of heavy skepticism. "But if you do end up accepting the Vows and exploring the new world," Mr. Rosier summarized, "you won't find many muggles of the modern era willing to treat wizards any differently than they'd treat a fellow muggle... except that they'll ask you to show them a bit of magic."

"And what of the muggles who committed atrocities against wizards in the past?" asked a grim Gellert, who had been the victim of many muggles when he was younger than young. "How do you intend to bring justice to them?"

"They're probably all dead by now, so I don't," the man said with another shrug. "Nature's already done it for me. Unless you think muggles can survive a hundred and twenty-five years... beyond a few outlier cases. Muggle medicine is advancing, but it's not that advanced. And it was even less advanced during your time."

Gellert snorted in agreement.

"If we're talking about modern muggle abusers," Mr. Rosier continued, "I try to go by a case-by-case basis and not let my mind paint all muggles with the same brush thanks to a few bad incidents. One thing I learned in psychology is that the human mind often focuses on negative past events far more than it remembers positive past events. I even put it to the test, just to see if it was true. One year I made a deliberate effort to interview all the muggleborns in Hogwarts; I asked each one what happened when their parents discovered they were magical and marked down which ones were positive and which were negative. Only one in ten of their parents reacted poorly. The rest were supportive. And I could feel my mind trying to focus on those few bad cases, because some of them were horrible, but that's why I wrote down all the events and tallied them up. About one in five cases, twice as many, were the complete opposite of horrible, and my brain wanted to ignore those in favor of the horrible ones. The rest were middle ground, but I consider that positive given how muggles used to react. Nine in ten muggles had mostly positive reactions to magic, at least when their own children were involved. The numbers don't lie."

Gellert, again, said nothing in reply.

There was silence for a time.

"I think that's all I wanted to say," Harry Rosier said eventually. "I'll return in six months with more books and I'll be there when you make your choice in a year." The Man Who Lives gave a slight nod, of respect or acknowledgement or dismissal, Gellert did not know. "Until then."

And Harry Rosier departed, leaving Gellert Grindelwald to his thoughts once more.

The next day...

Gellert glared at the newest additions to his cell as if they were stupid, dangerous mountain trolls.

Despite the enchantments he could feel upon them, he was sorely tempted to attempt to destroy them. He was also tempted to spit on them, piss on them, or just ignore them. But there was an even greater temptation gnawing at him like a great Cerberus might gnaw on a tree.

Gellert Grindelwald, despiser of muggles, was tempted to read the muggle books in his cell. (Influence: Science and Practice sounded particularly enticing.) The temptation was so great that he suspected he would not be able to resist for long, especially when the alternative was infinite boredom. The curiosity inside him would refuse to be denied.

Harry Rosier had been right.

Gellert was a scholar. Wanted to be a better scholar than he had been. Would have been the greatest magical scholar the world had ever seen – as great as Harry Rosier was now renowned to be – if not for the hatred that had consumed his entire life.

That scholarly aspect was an undeniable part of his 'core', as Harry Rosier had put it.

As that part of himself looked once more to the newspaper article describing Mr. Rosier's final year in Durmstrang, he felt the urge to say something, even if no one would hear it, especially not the one it was meant for.

He spoke anyway, his voice carrying into the empty corridor of his mostly-empty prison.

"Thank you, Mr. Rosier, for another evening of entertainment. Once more, you have my deepest congratulations."

There will be one more chapter before this fic is labeled "complete".

With how often Grindelwald was mentioned in Harry Potter and the Boy Who Lived, I imagine The Santi had something planned for him. Thus, this epilogue. It's probably not how The Santi would have handled it but hey, that's just the nature of fanfiction.